The problem with a vibrant immigration-led economy is that the bourgeoisie constantly mistakes their tasty Pad Thai for a fair and equitable labour market.
This is a complete misrepresentation of the truth.
Australia has a rich and glorious history of slavery. From the early days of convicts and ‘coolies’, to the near ceaseless exploitation of Islander peoples, indigenous peoples, blackbirding, pearling, work for the dole and, most recently, the wage theft at the HEART of the immigration-led economy.
These are all forms of slavery and became so rampant in the last cycle that new legislation (2018) had to be passed to hide the practices.
Then again in 2025.
But it hasn’t made much difference.
Fair Work is still recovering hundreds of millions per year.
The Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $358 million for more than 249,000 underpaid workers in 2024-25, taking back-payments to workers to more than $2 billion across the last five years.
The latest recoveries came in a year when the Fair Work Ombudsman secured its highest ever penalties in court in a single legal action, contributing to record annual penalties. The operators of Sushi Bay outlets in NSW, Darwin and Canberra were ordered to pay $15.3 million for deliberately underpaying 163 workers more than $650,000.
The back-payments and court penalties figures are detailed in the workplace regulator’s newly published Annual Report.
Half a million young Australians are exploited, with chimney sweep kids leading the way.
Around 400,000 Australians – one in five workers aged under 25 – are paid below the legal minimum wage for their age, according to ACTU analysis of ABS data.
The analysis is released on the first day of early voting for the upcoming federal election, along with Demos polling showing that stopping wage theft is important or extremely important as an issue in the upcoming federal election for 81 per cent of undecided voters aged 18-24.
Young people in insecure work are disproportionately impacted by wage theft, with 30 per cent of 18-year-old casual workers paid less than what they should be under the relevant junior award rate.
Indeed, kids and ‘coolies’ are the new modern slaves.
Underpayment remains one of the most pervasive issues confronting Australian labour law. In this context, young persons are a group especially vulnerable to workplace exploitation. Young workers’ lack of knowledge of their entitlements, low rates of union membership, precarious employment arrangements and limited leverage to negotiate working conditions each contribute to their susceptibility to mistreatment by those for whom they work.
Nobody likes to admit that their mocha-chino-skim-latte-esso is served up by an 18th-century Dickensian child who eats the leftovers in the kitchen because they can’t pay the rent, let alone own anything, but that’s pretty much the truth of it. Not even an artificial sweetener can desour that brew.
And I’m not arguing that the US is any better or that it’s not being opportunistic with its 12.5% slavery tariff.
The United States is planning to impose a 12.5 per cent tariff on goods from Australia, alleging the country has failed to take action to prevent slavery and forced labour.
Anthony Albanese says any tariff on Australian exports to the US is “unjustified and inconsistent” with the free trade agreements between the two allies.
Notice the lack of denial. Everything is free trade for ‘worker’s champion’ Albo. Even human rights. His famously impoverished mother would probably be sent as an involuntary wet nurse to Calcutta.
Having said all of that, if we are going to take hypocritical modern stands in trade, we should counter-tariff the US 20000%.
